"Golly, it um berry mysteferious.

I'se tink--; but, Jerrybosalum, look dar, Mass' Cap'en, look dar!" he suddenly exclaimed, his voice again changing to a tone of intense horror, while he looked the picture of abject terror, his eyeballs rolling and his teeth chattering as before.

"Duppy come catchee me, for suah! Dere he am comin' up wid him long claw--dere he am--dere he am!" We all rose up on the side of the bulwarks, as if with one accord, looking in the direction to which Jake's trembling hand pointed, where, between the meshes of the rigging away forward in front of the mainmast we could dimly discern a long sinuous greenish-white body gradually rising to the surface of the water that covered the lower part of the deck.
The mysterious thing seemed to make after the negro, although no apparent movement was perceptible, while its colour became more luminous as it got nearer.
Jackson was closer than any of us to Jake; and, as he stood up in the main-chains to help the negro up, he perceived what the object was that had frightened him, for he could see down into the water clear of the rigging, which somewhat hampered our view.
"Why, it's a shark!" he called out.

"It is a big fellow too--larger than the brute that nearly tackled me the other day." "A shark, Massa Jackson, for true, hey ?" said Jake, turning round to assure himself of the fact; and, then, seeing his pursuer to be of no supernatural origin, as he had supposed, but only one of the ordinary, if ugly, denizens of the deep, his alarm disappeared instanter and he burst into a fit of laughing--his African nature being as susceptible as that of a child, his moods varying in a moment.
"Yah, yah," he roared, "me no 'fraid ob shark; I'se tink him ider one duppy or de debbil, for suah, when um touch me on de shin-bone!" "I'se tole you so, Jake," said Cuffee with great contempt.

"You'se nebber see duppy in de daylight.